Reflection Theory: decoding the meaning behind The Boy and The Heron (SPOILERS)

[@patrickrusso877]

Another Turtlereviews banger!! Well put analysis of a beauitful lu poetic film. I really enjoyed your take on reflection and it’s presence in the film.

[@kevadii]

Mullholand Drive and Bladerunner are two of my favorite movies and this might be up there for me now too after having just seen it. It also reminded me a lot of Andrew Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1970). Love the video, keep up the great work

[@goginga2852]

Incredibly well said brother. Keep doing reviews, you have real potential with content creation

[@alexedi]

great analysis! you verbalized most of my thoughts about this ridiculously beautiful film. if this is the end, it`s a fitting end to a towering career. an oscar nomination (at least - if not a win) is mandatory. not that this matters to miyazaki, he`s above awards. but the film SHOULD win the oscar, because nothing in this year in animation even comes close.. anyway, good luck with your channel from a new subscriber across the pond! :)

[@MoyenAlam_S]

you have only 54 subscribers but how you explained the movie is so good

[@prajnadeva]

Nice catch on the stone. The thing I still don't get is the birthing room metaphor. What does it symbolizes, why is it taboo to enter, and what happened during that scene. We know it is when Mahito accepted Natsuko as new mother, but what prompted that?

[@turtle-reviews]

Interesting question. I don’t have a specific answer right now but I will note that wouldn’t it have been interesting if Natsuko had her child in the spirit world? Her child would have been born outside of the temporal world and could have chosen to live in any time line he wanted to by going through a specific door. So much of this film is left up to the audience’s interpretation and I think if we were to read solely into the themes at play in that scene we could say that creation is a sacred process which should not be disrupted by human will. We know that the power stone has a will of its own and could have been responsible for bringing Natsuko into the birthing room in the first place. Perhaps the stone was securing its future by recruiting Natsuko’s child as its new ward? In that line of thinking it’s also interesting that Mahito is almost smothered by the paper in that scene. Perhaps the stone would rather have Natsuko’s child, someone birthed away from the corrupted reality of the real world, inherit the great grand uncle’s power while the great grand uncle would rather have Mahito. Who we know is symbolically the same character who carries malice and imperfections with him.

[@prajnadeva]

@@turtle-reviews yes, any scene should have double or triple meaning. 1. Internal lore of the movie. 2. Miyazaki life. 3. Symbolism audience could take independent of Miyazaki. You just describe (1). Now what I thought about Miyazaki life symbolism is this: his son Gorou was warned by Miyazaki's wife/ Gorou's mother not to enter animation industry. He became architect instead. When He enter Ghibli as director for Earthsea, Miyazaki opposed it. He disliked Earthsea movie. But later he give Up on Poppy Hill screenplay to Gorou, and he did better job on that one.

[@SourSnail70]

i think the stone being destroyed by the parakeet was representing the loss of detail animation (in reference to anime because of Miyazaki's view on it lol)

[@BinaryDood]

I think it was about someone being borne and molded completely by a structure of meaning cannot simply rebuild it hastly to keep it from falling. The world is different and requires different views (a new generation) in order to restructure meaning. Without that, older fantasies rely on cardiac arrest and enforce rather than inspire the new agents of the world (children) and are doomed to crumble.

[@gabrielchasecanceladosinap3959]

Well... I can see that. Miyazaki technically is one of the forefathers of anime as we know it. And he had seen how basically the industry he helped creating is self imploding. And so he has a reason of to feel resented with the world he created. But none the less, he cares for it. Enought to choose someone else to leade his world into a New and better direction, instead of choosing someone like the Parrot King.

[@BinaryDood]

@@gabrielchasecanceladosinap3959 precisely!

[@gabrielchasecanceladosinap3959]

@@BinaryDood and someone like the Parrot King could represent people like Toei, or Mappa or many other modern studios and corporations that apreciate animation more as a bussiness than an art form. That or they don't simply apreciate animation.

[@BinaryDood]

@@gabrielchasecanceladosinap3959 I think the Parrot King, regardless what it directly targets to represent, stands for someone born already inside the system, thus was molded by its functions. Especially those who seek power: they will treat the system as a game to be played, rigged and outrigged. That's why a bad king tends to follow a good one. The bad king merely follows the trail unknowingly why it was made such and so in the first place. One such individual, made and defined by the stern rules of society as they are but not as what they ought to be, can't build anything that will last in a world where the only constant is change.

[@nonexistentfuture519]

The world is cruel but it is also beautiful.

[@ifLifeWereAnAnime]

interesting nice vid

[@miruajin6448]

Oh maybe this film is supposed to be watched by the artists relatives as they would know something the general audience dont

[@13mgreg]

These movies are for children. miyazaki does not create for anyone else. Loosely this follows the book boy and the blue heron. Its supposed to help children understand emotions.

[@AbdullahMikalRodriguez]

I don't think I've ever seen a dumber comment on KZbin